


Question

by Nope



Series: Companionverse [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-28
Updated: 2007-01-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 13:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Dennis, as always, has a question.





	Question

"Doctor," Dennis began.

The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out of his mouth and glared. "Yes? What?"

"Um! Nothing." 

Dennis pulled himself up onto the crossbeam and shuffled along so the Doctor could squeeze in beside him, both of them pressed against the curved underside of the massive water tank / flying saucer. The Doctor rapped on the metal, picked what to Dennis looked like a completely random spot, and started poking at it with his screwdriver.

"I was just wondering," Dennis started again.

"Shoot," said the Doctor. "No, really, shoot." He pointed. "Defence drones; can't waste time taking them out with the sonic screwdriver. ...any time now, Dennis!"

"Oh! Right!" Dennis pulled his wand out of his sleeve and aimed it at the first of the buzzing spheres, the colour of a snitch but the size of a Bludger. "Stupefy!"

Red light flashed again and again.

"Do you know what you're doing?" The Doctor asked. The section in front of him was glowing faintly around the edges, first blue, then green, then an odd sort of purple-almond colour.

"Of course I do," Dennis said indignantly. "I was in Dumbledore's Army!" He swung around to take out another drone and almost toppled off the beam, only the Doctor's hand -- snaked out with inhuman speed -- keeping him upright.

"Do you mind not falling to your death? I'm trying to save the planet here."

"Sorry!"

They both ducked as another drone buzzed past. Its wake was like being slapped with lukewarm steam.

"Eww," said Dennis, wiping his face on his sleeve.

"A by-product of the flight mechanism?" The Doctor pondered. "No, no. Unless... Hydrokinesis! That's a bit clever. Not as clever as me, of course, but as these things go."

"They're made of water?" Dennis asked. "Oh, that's easy then!" 

He swished and flicked his wand in a complicated sort of way. The buzzing promptly stopped and the Doctor was just about to say something almost complementary when small white things smashed against metal on either side of his head, spraying them with shards of china.

"What the--"

"I turned them into teacups! I forgot about momentum, though," Dennis admitted. "Hey, look, it's opening! The bangs must have done something."

He pointed. It was. The glowing section receded into the tank, revealing a smoothly curved corridor.

"I did that with my trusty sonic screwdriver," said the Doctor.

"Okay!" Dennis said, already clambering inside.

"I did! And what have I told you about wandering into alien ships?"

"Do it quietly so you won't be noticed?"

"No. Well, yes. But, more importantly, I said I go first." The Doctor pushed himself up onto the crossbeam and nimbly jumped inside the ship. Dennis followed and they closed the hatch again behind them. It blended seamlessly with the wall.

"Gorgeous," said the Doctor. "Some form of semi-permeable monomolecular liquid metal polymer mesh; an artificial cell system."

"It's alive?"

"Vaguely techno-organic. A sort of life, I suppose. Not much of one. No music, no art, no dancing." The Doctor cha-cha-cha'd a few steps down the corridor. "Oh, hello. Buttons!"

"I didn't touch anything!" said Dennis quickly.

"And keep it that way." The Doctor frowned at the array. It was like the wall had heat blisters, but arranged in perfect spirals of decreasing size and a shifting spectrum from blue through yellow to green.

"Is it alive like the TARDIS is?" Dennis asked.

"Compared to the TARDIS this stuff isn't even pond algae." The Doctor started messing with his sonic screwdriver again and a series of musical tones sounded from the array. "These are arranged according to the golden ratio. Fibonacci sequence; like leaf arrangements."

"Okay," said Dennis. "Only I was going to ask earlier, does the TARDIS hate you?"

There was a discordant shriek of notes as the Doctor swung around to glare at him. "No! What? No! Absolutely no to that-- what?"

"It's just that everywhere we go, there seems to be killer aliens," Dennis said.

"That's a bit of exaggeration."

"We went to Greece and there were those robot men, and we went to the moon and there were cow-people, and to Meltaneen Seven and the Argolites invaded, and the Drax were sabotaging the Great Race and--"

"Yes--"

"--there was that Raxacoricofallapatorian on--"

"Yes, thank you, Dennis."

"I really like travelling with you, it's just that the TARDIS always picks the point in space and time closest to your intended destination that also means you have to fight monsters, so I thought maybe she hated you," Dennis said.

"She doesn't hate me. Anyway, what's wrong with monsters?"

"They try to eat, kill, enslave or shrink us," Dennis said.

"Apart from that."

"The shrinking was pretty cool! I mean, being out of dimensional phase."

"Making the universe a better place is what we do," the Doctor said, going back to the buttons. "It's not a job; it's a calling, a way of life. Going to strange new places, meeting strange new people, running away down strange new corridors; you get to see all the interesting stuff, like the Megascoop and the Great Race and, look, right here on Earth, a hydrokinetic powered techno-organic interstellar space craft!"

"It looks like a giant lollipop!" Dennis said cheerfully. The Doctor glared. "Well, it does."

"Life is a recipe, Dennis. You've got the stuff that tastes good, like sugar, and bad, like, flour, but you need both to make biscuits."

"You could just eat the sugar!"

"You're not having any sugar. Remember the Chocolate Frog incident?"

"No."

"Exactly." The Doctor hit five of the buttons and the wall shimmered and began opening. "The TARDIS doesn't hate me; she's just adding the necessary spice to life."

"Spice and monsters!" Dennis agreed, beaming.

The door finished opening. The amorphous protoplasmic creatures on the other side waved sensory antennae and extended vicious looking sharp-edged pseudopodia. Dennis and the Doctor promptly stuck their hands in the air.

"Okay, maybe she hates me a little bit," the Doctor said.

Fortunately, he still had the sonic screwdriver.


End file.
